Tribulations d’un Stradivarius en Amérique
Based on the theft of an important Stradivarius, the novel tells how the violin served as an ashtray for the kleptomaniac thief, then as a bargaining chip for his widow to defraud the insurance companies.
On 28 February 1936, the soloist Bronislaw Huberman gives a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. Of the two violins he has brought with him, a Stradivarius and a Guarneri, he chooses the latter. When he leaves the stage, the Stradivarius has vanished and will not resurface for many years. The story of the missing instrument began on a winter night in 1706, in a valley of the Italian Alps, when a woodcutter chose the spruce he was about to fell under the dark moon of January. From its making by the master luthier Stradivari to the incredible but true twists and turns that followed the theft, Frédéric Chaudière recounts the eventful life of an over-coveted violin at the pace of a serial novel: for three centuries, the Stradivarius has indeed crystallised and unleashed the passions of craftsmen, musicians, music lovers, and those in love with art, profit and glory.
